JOHN: If we don’t, they’ll go through all the hell that we’ve been through, probably a worse hell than anything we’ve known yet--in this country, anyhow--and then their children, and their children’s children, will try again. GWEN: But _now_! Can’t we do anything now? JOHN: I don’t know. GWEN: We ought to try. JOHN: That’s what I feel. That’s why I’m chucking the business. GWEN: What are you going to do? JOHN: Follow my urge! That’s all I can do. GWEN: What’s that mean? JOHN: I’ve got a few hundred pounds in the bank; and I’m selling my piano, and everything else I can. I’m going to write; and think and read; and get into touch with any others I can, who feel as we do. GWEN: Yes. What are you going to write? JOHN: I want to try and write something for the ordinary sort of person, who’s just lost and discontented. There _are_ some. GWEN: Heaps and heaps. JOHN: That might be my job; it’s not much; when one talks of _doing_, what can one _do_, oneself, seems so inadequate. But it would have been a poor excuse before a tribunal: “I’m not going to join up.” “Why?” “I don’t see myself winning the war single-handed” ... plenty only stopped a bullet going into something else. I may only encourage somebody else to do something. GWEN: You’re lucky having something you know you ought to do. I wish I had. JOHN: You have! GWEN: What? JOHN: There’s one way all our lot can help: it’s probably the best way, too. GWEN: What is it? JOHN: To live by what you believe, which is difficult ... and not by what you don’t believe, which is easy. GWEN: Yes. JOHN: If you can, you’re a fanatic! But I believe you’ve got to have something of a fanatic in you to do anything worth while these days. The thing is to keep one’s fanaticism, and to keep one’s humanity. GWEN: Jacko! It _is_ important to live what you believe, isn’t it? JOHN: _I_ think so; tremendously; I think, if this generation misses its opportunity, _which it may_, it’s because we’ve lost the old beliefs and haven’t taken the trouble to get a new one for ourselves. GWEN: Yes. Oh, there are such heaps of people “lost and discontented”; I know such heaps of girls like that. They just don’t know where they are; they make an awful mess of things sometimes. JOHN: You do, if you don’t know where you are. You know, if we’re not careful, there’ll be a period of aimless licence, and then reaction. It’s a critical time all right. A puritan reaction; and all the old inhibitions and denials and secrecies _clamped down_ on our children again. GWEN: It makes everything seem unimportant except doing one’s bit; doesn’t it? JOHN: Yes. GWEN: It’s funny that just when I’m beginning to feel like that, there _is_ something in my life that’s important. JOHN: What? GWEN: You won’t laugh! JOHN: Of course not. GWEN: I only wish it didn’t seem so important ... you won’t laugh? JOHN: You’ll get a clump on the head in a minute, if you keep on asking me not to laugh ... what is it? GWEN: I’m in love.